hree arches and four pillars, sumptuously decorated, uphold each of the
clerestory walls, which are pierced at the top by a handsome triforium
running completely around the church. The _retablo_ of the high altar is
richly decorated, perhaps too richly; the _reja_, which closes off the
sacred area, is of fine seventeenth-century workmanship.

The choir stalls are of a surprising richness, carved scenes covering
the backs and seats. They are famous throughout the country, and the
genius, above all the imagination, of the artist who executed them (his
name is unluckily not known, though it is believed to be Aleman) must
have been notable. Pious when carving the upper and visible seats, he
seems to have been exceedingly ironical and profane when sculpturing the
inside of the same, where the reverse or the caustic observation
produced in the carver's mind has been artfully drawn, though sometimes
with an undignified grain of indecency and obscenity not quite in
harmony with our Puritanic spirit of to-day.

_PART V_

_Eastern Castile_

I

VALLADOLID

The origin of Valladolid is lost in the shadows of the distant past. As
it was the capital of a vast kingdom, it was thought necessary, as in
the case of Madrid, to place its foundation prior to the Roman invasion;
the attempt failed, however, and though Roman ruins have been found in
the vicinity, nothing is positively known about the city's history prior
to the eleventh century.

When Sancho II. fought against his sister locked up in Zamora, he
offered her Vallisoletum in exchange for the powerful fortress she had
inherited from her father. In vain, and the town seated on the Pisuerga
is not mentioned again in historical documents until 1074, when Alfonso
VI. handed it over, with several other villages, to Pedro Ansurez, who
made it his capital, raised the church (Santa Maria la Mayor) to a
suffragan of Palencia, and laid the first foundations of its future
greatness. In 1208 the family of Ansurez died out, and the _villa_
reverted to the crown; from then until the reign of Philip IV.
Valladolid was doubtless one of the most important cities in Castile,
and the capital of all the Spains, from the reign of Ferdinand and
Isabel to that of Philip III.

Consequently, the history of Valladolid from the thirteenth to the
sixteenth century is that of Spain.

In Valladolid, Peter the Cruel, after three days' marriage, forsook his
bride, Dona Blanca de Bourbon